The Gambler

October 30, 2017
Investigative reporter Rempel (At the Devil’s Table) delivers a solid biography of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. After Kerkorian’s death at the age of 98 in 2015, Rempel faced a wall of silence from Kerkorian’s family, friends, and associates. Using the sources available to him, including a very public paternity suit when Kerkorian was in his 80s, Rempel reveals Kerkorian as a man with the nerves of steel needed to build business empires in transportation, gambling, and film. During WWII Kerkorian was employed by the British air force to fly new American-built warplanes across the Atlantic. After the war, Kerkorian created a cargo-flight business by purchasing surplus aircraft. An enthusiastic gambler, Kerkorian entered the high-risk field of Las Vegas real estate, eventually owning many of the city’s best-known hotels and casinos. The chapters on Las Vegas stand out, both for Rempel’s telling of the tale and for the fascinating stratagems Kerkorian used against rivals, among them Howard Hughes. Although Kerkorian’s private life—his multiple marriages and many romances, his need for anonymity, and his demanding personality—receives short shrift due to the author’s limited sources, this is still an engrossing story of a self-made man. Agent: David P. Halpern, Robbins Office.

January 1, 2018

Kirk Kerkorian rose from near poverty in California to become a movie and real estate mogul who shunned the spotlight. Reporter Rempel (At the Devil's Table) digs into court transcripts and archives from the early days of Las Vegas to give readers a look at one of the most publicity-shy financial giants of the last 50 years. Investor and philanthropist Kerkorian (1917-2015) was the silent money behind some of the biggest deals in the 20th century: building and selling the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (now Bally's Las Vegas), negotiating a sale of the back catalog of MGM films to media mogul Ted Turner, and working with automobile executive Lee Iacocca on a failed hostile takeover of Chrysler. Kerkorian was also responsible for convincing Howard Hughes to invest in Las Vegas. While Rempel writes a solid rags-to-riches story that covers everything from the rise of aviation and the popularity of Las Vegas to changes in movie studios and U.S. car manufacturing, the narrative is missing the voices of Kerkorian's inner circle, who chose not to share personal details about the private billionaire. VERDICT A notable biography of a key mogul of American culture and his life of extraordinary luck.--John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2017
An admiring biography of the Vegas wheeler-dealer who made billions but whose personal life became quite tangled.Veteran Los Angeles Times investigative reporter Rempel (At the Devil's Table: The Man Who Took Down the World's Biggest Crime Syndicate, 2011, etc.), a consultant for the TV show Narcos, returns with a richly detailed account of the life of Kirk Kerkorian (1917-2015). The author begins in 1972 in Las Vegas, ventures back to 1944, when Kerkorian was a daring and fortunate pilot, moves back to his subject's birth and boyhood, and continues chronologically thereafter. Kerkorian was a fearless gambler--in casinos (at the tables, he once bet $1 million on a single roll of the dice), at the bargaining table in business deals, and in his love life. Throughout, Rempel emphasizes Kerkorian's my-word-and-handshake-are-golden business ethos, his astonishing generosity, and his fierce desire to avoid the limelight. (Several times, the author contrasts Kerkorian's style to that of Donald Trump.) All sorts of celebrities--in business, sports, and elsewhere--glide through the text, including tennis star Andre Agassi; Mike Tyson, whose infamous ear-biting episodes occurred at a fight in Kerkorian's MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas; fellow business magnate Lee Iacocca; Elvis Presley; and Cary Grant, one of Kerkorian's good friends. We also learn about Kerkorian's exercise regimen--he loved tennis and stayed fit throughout his life--and the only negative aspects of his character that Rempel deals with are the mogul's various marriages (three) and love affairs, one of which dissolved into nastiness, lawsuits, and paternity questions. The vast fortune Kerkorian assembled was truly astonishing; his many Vegas, airline, and automotive deals put him in the ranks of America's richest people. Although the author and his subject never met, the text is chockablock with dialogue and intimate detail assembled by deep research and many interviews.The compelling story of a Horatio Alger who lived well into his 90s.

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December 15, 2017
Trying to write about billionaire Kirk Kerkorian (1917-2015) presents serious challenges. Kerkorian, one of the least known of America's richest men, was famous for his reclusiveness and his aversion even to on-the-record interviews; further, when Rempel began working on the book, he was told by Kerkorian's people, in no uncertain terms, that they would not be cooperating in any way. Still, he persevered and has put together the story of a poorly educated young man, a gambler and a renegade, who used his natural business acumen to build an empire that included Las Vegas casinos and a movie studio. Relying on interviews with a variety of sources who did agree to talk (among them boxing promoter Don King, former junk-bond king Michael Milken, and politician Bob Dole), as well as on court documents and a few taped reminiscences by Kerkorian himself, the book provides a remarkably detailed and fascinating look at the career of an idiosyncratic tycoon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)